


The Bathtub

by awanface



Category: The Hour
Genre: Childhood Memories, Gen, between season 1 and 2, freddie reminiscing in san francisco
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-12 03:04:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2093238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awanface/pseuds/awanface
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he thought of her, he thought of her in that bathtub.<br/>--<br/>Freddie is in his San Francisco hotel when something makes him think of Ruth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bathtub

When he thought of her, he thought of her in that bathtub.

The bathtub, the blood—a detail added by his overactive imagination, never having been blood at the actual scene—, the last phone call. An immeasurable sense of guilt.

So Freddie stopped thinking about her—purposefully. He avoided all things that could remind him of her because she was that bathtub, that blood, that guilt. It mattered little that he know understood it, that her death know had meaning—all meaning death could have, of course—and that he had made it up to her the only way he knew how: by finding out the truth. That is, it mattered little to that part of his brain that dealt with memories and unresolved feelings, to him, what made him Freddie, it was essential. To him, explaining her death and finding her killer had been liberating. But then: why he still could not think of her without awakening the memory of that bathtub?

That was, until that day: He was having coffee and smoking a cigarette in the hotel’s restaurant in San Francisco when it happened.

Because it was subconscious—she had been brought up in her mind suddenly and inexplicably—he did not realise of how significant that moment was or what exactly had brought it up. Maybe it had been the two small girls in the next table, maybe the pearls of that old woman, maybe something more subtle: like the smell of warm butter on toast—something very Joycesque, no doubt.

The scene developed in his head like a film, effortlessly. The first time he saw her, the autumn of 1940. She had been a child, then! But before the war was over she had already grown up taller than him. Despite the age difference, she had tried to intimidate him, every bit the Estella: but he was no Pip. He was not embarrassed by his old boots, and his hands were every bit as delicate as hers. She, Ruth, had played with him and paid attention to him because Lord Elms had said she should, until she got bored of him and asked her mother ‘Will he ever leave?’ and ‘When will he leave?’. But then he left, and he came back, and she wished he would never leave again—she had never said it, but Freddie had known.

She was bored almost all of the time, but at some point Freddie had stopped being someone who had to amuse her and started to become someone who amused her—and who she wanted to amuse too. Ruth had realised his smart was not only for show, that it came in handy sometimes. And he told her things nobody ever talked to her about. The first years, during the Blitz and for a while afterwards, she had not known the real reason why he was living with her family—that had fascinated him. She was a child, yes, but surely: you know we are at war?

Freddie would have been a horrible soldier, she would say. He was not one to obey orders, his arms were weaker than the cook’s, and he had no aim. And yet, he liked to say, he would have been a brilliant member of the Resistance. So they played at that: to be in France, hiding from the Gestapo—which was, of course, embodied by the ever unsuspecting Lady Elms (It would embarrass him afterwards, and he could not even think of it after his mother died). She, Ruth, had discovered gradually just how many sides Freddie’s intelligence had: how he had discovered several hidden back-doors in the house that made incredible hiding places, the way he charmed the cook into having scones after hours, how he left his room at night whenever it pleased him to visit the library. At the same time, Freddie discovered the rebelliousness in her—which was really, actually, only born from the necessity of being noticed. She knew exactly how to make her mother angry (getting her own shoes dirty, playing with her jewellery)—and to make her mother angry was her favourite pastime. She played the victim so well! And everybody pitied her after one of her mother’s sermons, and gave her cake and kisses, and attention.

It felt like a great and sudden pain, all the greater for not being expected—a betrayal—, and it awoke him from his reverie. The cigarette was burning in his fingers. He let it go with a guttural “Fuck” he was not aware of having uttered, and then, recovering his senses—the feeling of the newspaper in his left hand, the cacophony of voices and the sound of dishes clashing, the smell of butter, the bathtub—and he repeated a much more heartfelt, conscious “Fuck.”

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote that for a prompt in LJ last year and forgot to post it, I saw it now and though I'd share--but I'm a bit embarrassed and it hasn't been betaed. Sorry. Thanks.
> 
> I MISS THIS SHOW SO MUCH.


End file.
